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To C or not to C

Sentinel & Enterprise

Updated:
07/28/2013 06:38:00 AM EDT

Parent Forward By Bonnie J. Toomey

Where do babies come from, Mommy? They come from a mommy and a daddy. But, how does the baby come out, Mommy? Well ... that answer might be a little more complicated. In the United States today one in four babies are delivered by C-section.

It's a question my oldest daughter, expecting her second child, asked herself many times over in the last nine months. Her first birth required an emergency C-section when the nurse suddenly noticed that baby Robert did not like labor anymore. An all-day labor leading to 9 1/2 centimeters dilated had led to her husband being whisked into scrubs, as my youngest daughter and I watched her being wheeled straight away to the OR. Baby Robert came into the world safe and sound 10 minutes later! Thank God for technology, modern science and good doctors and nurses.

Three years later, my daughter and her husband announced they were expecting again. At first she assumed that she would have to have a C-section, and that she naturally should. But as baby Steven grew, so did the idea that maybe she would have the chance to give birth naturally. But could she do it? What were the risks? Her doctors were giving her a choice -- a C-section was on the table along with the chance to have a natural delivery. She began a slow struggle, going back and forth weighing the options.

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On one hand, a C-section is relatively safe and a mother can plan for it, but on the other hand, mothers experience a longer recovery and, as my daughter aptly put it, "at the end of the day it's still major surgery." She thought of what the experience might be like, an experience she had hoped for from the very beginning as a mother.

She asked me what was it like to have given birth au natural.

"Mom, I don't know how you did it four times -- and without anything!" she said.

I was naïve, I thought. And I was no hero of baby deliveries. By the fourth one I had wanted an epidural after a friend told me how great it was -- you don't feel any pain -- but my wonderful (and he is) doctor talked me out of an epidural by using Aristotle's argument of persuasion. There is nothing like a little ethos to massage your ego, a little pathos to raise the passion, and a little logos logic to sew it all up.

"You've done this before, you've had success, and you'll do just fine. Why change what is working?!"

Almost 30 years later, I was listening to my daughter make her own decisions. She was at the beginning of her third trimester and a C-section it was, scheduled for the 12th of July. Her due date was the 17th. This would ensure less chance of her going into labor before the surgery. But later on that week, a doctor friend she had bumped into was surprised to find out she was having a C-section at all.

"Oh, you can try for a VBAC (vaginal birth after Caesarean) if there is no physical reason not to," he said. And there wasn't.

To C or not to C? To V or not to V? These were the questions. She wanted to do the right thing. But what is the right thing? The doctors said she was a good candidate for the VBAC. According to the Mayo Clinic, roughly 75 percent of moms who've had a Caesarean birth the first time around are successful at VBAC. She gave it more thought.

"Mom, I don't feel right about a C-section. I am going to try a VBAC," she said. "I feel good about it."

Because of protocol, she was allowed one week past her due date to try what she had been hopeful for from the beginning. A Ceasarean was planned for the July 24 at noon. High noon, I thought.

"Now that I have a little one, I really want to try for it," explained my daughter. "Mom, I couldn't bend, laugh, or cough."

And so, the weeks inched toward July 17, and her appointments came closer together, and her due date came and went.

"Nat, enjoy these last moments alone with Robert," I said. "Pretty soon, you'll be the mother of two."

Indeed, those last days of pregnancy are filled with uncomfortable sleep and a feeling of anxious anticipation. Every mother plays it out inside her head as she scrubs the floor one more time, throws in the last load of laundry, and checks that her bag is packed with what she will need. Every second-time mother on some level plays out the delivery over and over in her head, as if she's rehearsing for that moment in time that matters most in the world.

She called me on Monday, it was the 21st, and as we talked I could hear something instinctually familiar in the sound of her voice. A pause, a breath, a slower determination in what she was communicating.

"Nat, are you having contractions?' I asked.

Two days later I found myself at her side with her husband in the birthing room at the 11th hour; one hour before the scheduled C-section and 45 minutes before she was given the OK to push. She was going to do it on her own, with her husband and her mom there to help her through it.

I took a deep breath. I wanted to be strong for her. Here we go again, I thought. Don't think, just be there for her, just hold her hand, and place a cool cloth on her forehead and tell her how wonderfully hard she is working. Tell her you love her.

Two hours later a big, bouncing baby boy was born to two very proud and very tired parents. Everything in the world was right. We had everything we needed right there, right then.

And one extremely relieved grandmother just stood quietly in the light of a daughter's determination, a husband's strength, and the miracle of a grandson's birth into this big and beautifully, unbelievably complicated world.

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